Terrorists reach the crossroads

The killing of an INLA man last week might cause the group to break its ceasefire. But should it hold, the feud-riven organisation will set an example to all sides. Henry McDonald reports
Northern Ireland: special report

For almost a quarter of a century the Irish National Liberation Army inflicted widespread terror and destruction in Europe, Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic.

In the process of its 'armed struggle', it killed Tory MPs, British Army officers, RUC men, prison officers and loyalist paramilitaries. They even attacked Nato targets in Germany as part of the 'anti-imperialist' struggle. But in the other side of their 'struggle' the INLA also murdered Protestants worshipping in a church on the border, children playing on the stairwell of a high-rise flats complex in west Belfast, and young women attending a disco in Derry.

Most notably of all, however, the INLA was bogged down in seemingly endless bouts of fratricide in the various feuds that tore the organisation apart. In 1987, 13 INLA members died in a murderous vendetta between warring factions in dispute over the future direction of the movement.

It is therefore a supreme irony of the peace process that the organisation with the most unstable and ruthless history should be the one republican group to explicitly state that the war is over.

In its ceasefire statement of 23 August last year - just over a week after the Omagh bomb atrocity - the INLA acknowledged the 'faults and grievous errors in our prosecution of the war'.

Unlike the IRA, the INLA admitted that innocent people had been killed and injured 'and at times our actions as a liberation army fell far short of what they should have been'.

The INLA went on to accept the massive vote in favour of the Good Friday Agreement - an arrangement it had opposed during last year's referendum - by the people of Ireland.

'The will of the Irish people is clear. It is now time to silence the guns and allow the working classes the time and the opportunity to advance their demands and their needs.'

This shift from revolutionary armed action to socialist gradualism was a remarkable departure and up until last week the INLA had stuck to its promise that it would pursue a peaceful path.

The murder of INLA volunteer Patrick Campbell by 'ordinary' criminals poses a dangerous dilemma for the organisation. If it sits back and does nothing, it might invite other armed criminal groups in Dublin to challenge its authority in working-class parts of the city. But if, as now seems highly likely, the INLA hunts down those responsible for the savage torture killing, then it runs the risk of incurring the Irish government's wrath.

Dublin might decide to freeze the early release of INLA prisoners if the organisation starts killing people in the capital. In addition the Gardai have many INLA members under close surveillance since the Campbell murder. If INLA members are captured en route to kill Dublin criminals and are subsequently jailed, this might put further strain on the ceasefire.

For the first time in years it appears the INLA has an internal cohesion, which it lacked in the 1980s and early 1990s. Its current leadership are the great survivors, having dodged death in a series of internecine feuds in 1975, 1987 and most recently in 1996. The last round of faction fighting centred on disagreements over an earlier ceasefire which was declared from the dock of Dublin's Special Criminal Court in 1995 by the then INLA chief of staff, Hugh 'Cueball' Torney.

He had just been caught with three comrades attempting to smuggle weapons from the Republic to Northern Ireland. Torney attempted to plea bargain with the Irish state by offering a ceasefire in return for a lighter sentence. His comrades on the outside were outraged and ousted him as chief of staff.

When Torney was let out on bail by the Irish authorities, he absconded to Northern Ireland and sought to suppress the rebellion against his leadership. His supporters assassinated the newly appointed INLA chief of staff, Gino Gallagher, in a west Belfast office. Four more people, including a nine-year-old girl, Barbara McAloram, killed in mistake by gunmen who were trying to murder her brother, died in the feud. In February 1996 Hugh Torney was murdered in Lurgan, and with his death the last major feud in the ranks of the INLA ended.

Initially the INLA rejected the peace strategy devised by Sinn Fein leaders such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Its ability though to continue the 'war' in the absence of IRA violence was severely restricted. A highly efficient, experienced and well informed RUC would have no problem dealing with the INLA once the larger distraction of IRA violence had been removed.

There were short but deadly bursts of armed INLA activity, the most infamous of which was the murder of Billy Wright inside the Maze prison two days after Christmas 1997. The killing of the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader sparked a wave of retaliation attacks on republicans and Catholics. This in turn prompted the INLA to seek revenge on other loyalist terror groups, culminating in the murder of south Belfast UDA man Jim Guiney, who ironically was not involved in the loyalist attacks.

For the INLA leadership the Good Friday Agreement, and the subsequent massive endorsement it received from Irish people on both sides of the border, changed everything. Throughout the summer of 1998 the INLA held a series of discussions around Ireland and inside the Maze prison on a new departure. It had actually drafted its ceasefire statement on the very day that the Real IRA car bomb exploded in the centre of Omagh, killing 29 people.

Given that its ceasefire announcement would have been drowned in the publicity following the atrocity, the INLA waited for more than a week to declare that its war was finally over. Its next initiative, announced last month, was to offer loyalists a 'non-aggression pact' under which rival armed groups would agree not to attack each other and even work together to reduce sectarian tensions on the ground. So far the loyalists have yet to respond. It has also talked to the IRA in Belfast about the possibility of expanding the pact to cover all illegal armed groups.

Up until the murder of Patrick Campbell, the INLA had desisted from armed attacks. Now its expected response, no doubt as brutal and ruthless as the Campbell murder was, will also pose a dilemma for the Irish and British governments. If Bertie Ahern and the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Mandelson, do nothing, they will be accused by unionists of appeasing republicans, of implicitly accepting that terrorists can carry out 'internal housekeeping' against their own communities. On the other hand if the Irish and British authorities take action, such as the suspension of prisoner releases, the INLA ceasefire may come under further strain.

Yet the INLA's leadership insists that the ceasefire will be maintained even if its prisoners are punished for their comrades' actions on the outside. Moreover the organisation has rejected approaches from other republican dissidents to restart the armed struggle.

It would be a truly bizarre twist to politics in post-ceasefire Northern Ireland if the armed movement once seen as the most unpredictable in Irish history becomes the one that leads by example and helps to end the century-long tradition of violent republican struggle.